It is said that our natural gravitation toward music comes from the first sounds we ever hear – the rhythmic beating of our mother’s heart. If this is true, world-renowned percussion master John Santos must have heard his mother’s heart beating loud and clear. Tonight, the founder and director of the critically acclaimed Machete Ensemble will take his band to the stage of La Pena Cultural Center. In collaboration with four Bay Area poets, the 10-piece group will perform a truly unique combination of Afro-Cuban music and spoken word.
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Bay Area activists took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland Thursday evening to show their opposition to the House of Representatives’ 296-133 vote giving President Bush broad authority to use military force in Iraq.
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Features

SAN FRANCISCO — A man with the environmental activist group Earth First! has died after a fall of more than 50 feet from a redwood tree, raising concerns about the dangers of tree sits, often used to stop logging operations.
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SACRAMENTO — A Northern California Indian tribe has declared a “state of emergency” over fish kills on the Klamath River, and asked Gov. Gray Davis to issue a similar declaration for the tribe’s reservation.
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Members of a gay and lesbian community center say they were shocked to find the find the word “Fag!” and a swastika scribbled on their outdoor bulletin board earlier this week, as reported in the Daily Planet Oct. 8.
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Election Section

NEW YORK — Two executives who oversaw WorldCom’s financial record-keeping pleaded guilty Thursday to charges stemming from a federal probe of the company’s multibillion-dollar accounting scandal.
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